this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2024
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Is transgender a spectrum?
Gender is a spectrum, but trans just means not cis, with cis meaning identifying with your assigned at birth gender.
Cis and trans are Latin prefixes and opposites of each other - cis basically translating out to "same" and trans being "different." To be cis means to be the same gender that the doctor assigned you when you were born, while trans people transition to a gender different from their assigned gender. So you can't be on a spectrum of more trans or less trans because you're transitioning to x, y, or z.
There are spectrums that people choose from, though, if you want to get into some of the finer details. Some people use the prefix demi, meaning "partially" (like in demigod), to signify a gender that they most closely relate to but don't feel properly identifies them. Like somebody who is a demigirl most closely relates to being a woman, but doesn't feel like womanhood fits them. This is why the umbrella term non-binary exists, for people who feel like they fall somewhere outside the traditional designated roles of "man" or "woman" and more closely relate to a secret, third thing.
i think trans- denotes "change" or "movement", right? trans-isomers are usually rotated from their cis state, trans-portation moves things between areas, trans-lation changes the language of a text.
all to say, i think the change in and of itself is significant, and not everyone who's outside the "norm" feels a need to do it. there should probably be another term for that. too bad "heterogendered" conjures the imagery that it does.
You're right, that's the more accurate definition. A state of change, moving from one state of being to a new one.
I think trans still works fine in this context because gender is a cultural label designated to you entirely based on what the doctor thought at the time of your birth and what society assumes from things like secondary sex characteristics and behavior, and the cis label was retroactively applied to describe "anybody who isn't trans" after the trans label had been in use for decades. So there's nothing really scientific behind the label beyond the concept of that state of change. Gender itself is a cultural concept instead of a state of being too (as well as a performance that we do every moment of our lives) and so falls more into an active event than a passive state.
I don't know if you could call it a spectrum, but there are certainly more types of transgender people than cisgender. MTF, FTM, gender fluid, non-binary, and maybe even more. I wouldn't say there are degrees of transgenderism, tho. You are or you aren't.
Sexuality, on the other hand, is definitely a spectrum.